The free games that have been included with the various versions of Windows over the years occupy a unique position in the video game landscape. No one would include them on a list of the best or most influential games of all time, and it’s unlikely any of them have ever acted as a “system seller” to influence someone’s choice of OS. Yet over the past decade, games like Microsoft’s Solitaire, Minesweeper, and Mahjong may be the most widely played video games on any platform (though the Angry Birds games have probably come close to beating them). From bored hardcore gamers messing around on a borrowed laptop to bored secretaries on an extended coffee break to bored grandmas clicking away at their grandchildren’s hand-me-down Windows 98 tower, you’re unlikely to find a PC user that hasn’t at least tried these titles at one point or another.

The free game tradition continues with Windows 8, but oddly enough, this year’s collection of Microsoft-produced titles doesn't come preinstalled with the standard version of the operating system (we’re guessing some OEMs might fix this oversight before shipping their hardware, however). Instead, the games are tucked away in the Windows Games Store alongside more professional third-party fare like Fruit Ninja and Hydro Thunder Hurricane, as well as countless cheap-o knock-offs like Mahjong Plus and Card Game Collection. Downloading and installing Microsoft's free titles is relatively easy, but we have to wonder how many Windows 8 users will actively seek them out, rather than stumbling upon them in a preinstalled Games folder.

The most immediately noticeable change to the free games in Windows 8 is that they’re all designed to run primarily in full-screen mode as “Windows 8 style” apps. On the plus side, this helps create some very streamlined interfaces without distracting window borders or menu bars getting in the way. Multitaskers can play some of the available games in "snap mode" by dragging the game to a small sliver on the left or right side of the screen, but the results are mixed—Minesweeper and Wordament work fine in this compressed space, but the card layout in the Solitaire Collection gets so cramped that it's nearly unplayable. If you want to play Mahjong or Taptiles while you're on a teleconference, you're going to need a dual-screen setup.

This year’s crop of games is also the first to integrate with Xbox Live through the "Xbox Games on Windows" program. For most of the games, this functionally just means you can get a set of unimaginative, easy-to-unlock Achievements that aren't even worth that many Gamerscore points. Wordament is the only one of the games to make impressive use of any sort of multiplayer features.

Solitaire, Minesweeper, Mahjong and Taptiles also come equipped with Daily Challenges; a rotating selection of scenarios with special rules, time limits or goals. The quality and appeal of these Challenges varies greatly, as noted below, but many players will likely be put off playing them by the need to watch a 15 or 30 second video ad before getting to each day’s challenges. It’s not a horrible inconvenience, but it’s a bit grating that Microsoft feels the need to further monetize games that were, until recently, seen as a bonus for just buying its operating system.

I tested all of these games on our (overpowered for these purposes) Velocity Micro rig. I wasn't able to get access to a tablet running Windows 8 to test the touchscreen controls, but the games seem tuned for tablets in many ways, as noted below.

With those general notes out of the way, let's take a deeper look at the six free games from Microsoft Studios currently available in the Windows Games store.

Microsoft Solitaire Collection

When you say “solitaire” to most people, their mind will probably jump to Klondike Solitaire, the card game where you flip cards from a deck three at a time and try to make stacks of alternating colors and descending values. That’s available here, but it’s actually the least interesting of the five games included in this wider-ranging single-player card game collection, which gathers other solitaire games that have been available on various Microsoft Windows game packages in the past.

Freecell is definitely the most difficult of the available games to master, removing luck entirely by revealing every card to the player at the start. The rules are a bit tricky for beginners, but there’s a simple tutorial to explain how to use the "free cells" to move stacks of cards around in stacks of alternating colors. Almost every randomized deal can be solved with careful thinking and planning ahead, making for a diverting mental workout. Unfortunately for fans of the previous Windows Freecell editions, the Windows 8 version seems to have removed the ability to select a specific card arrangement by entering the game number (or at least I couldn’t find the option).

The other available solitaire games require much less skill, and primarily involve rote pattern matching mixed with a modicum of luck-of-the-draw. Tripeaks was the most compelling to me. Even though the entire game can be summed up as "looking for an available card with a value one higher or lower than the current card," I found something deeply satisfying about finding and creating long chains of cards snaking up and down the value chain (complete with sound effects that continually rise in pitch).

Pyramid was much less interesting—matching up pairs of cards whose values add up to 13 feels like a task designed for slow second graders more than functioning adults. I was more intrigued by Spider Solitaire, which uses multiple decks of cards and asks players to create descending stacks of entire suits while avoiding having other cards get in the way. There’s a bit of strategy and organization needed to succeed here, though not so much that you’ll have to strain your brain as much as in Freecell. Altogether, the available games are pretty good at engaging that OCD part of your brain that sees a messy deck of shuffled cards and just craves to put it in some sort of discernible order.

The entire collection looks great as a full-screen Windows 8 app. There’s a nice variety of premade visual themes to choose from, but the ability to customize backgrounds and cards with your own picture collection is sure to be a favorite feature for many. The ability to undo moves going back all the way to the beginning of a game is another nice feature that hasn’t always been present in Microsoft’s card games in the past, and while this does make it pretty easy to cheat, it’s solitaire, so the only person you’re really cheating is yourself.

Oh, and before you ask, the cards don’t do that little bouncing thing when you win a game. Instead, they turn into sparkling butterflies and fly about the screen. Seriously.

Minesweeper

The only thing you really need to know about the Windows 8 version of Minesweeper is that it has an Adventure Mode.

I’ll let that sink in for a second.

They added an adventure mode... to Minesweeper.

How do you turn a puzzle game about clicking a grid full of mines into an adventure game? By adding a spelunking motif and giving players control of a cave-excavation specialist that’s trying to dig for treasure while avoiding traps. Of course, those traps are marked by large numbers hidden under the adjacent dirt, indicating how many traps are nearby, just like in the base Minesweeper game. But there are also plenty of adventure game trappings larded on top of the randomly generated levels, including doors that can be opened by hidden keys, walls that can be blasted through by dynamite, and stationary monsters that can be taken out by a bow and arrow. There are maps to find hidden treasures and shields to offer extra protection and basically just a lot of exploratory stuff that you wouldn't normally associate with Minesweeper.

While the sheer weirdness of Adventure Mode is interesting for a little while, the implementation just isn’t strong enough to be a long-term draw. There’s way too much empty space, and each blank area has to be annoyingly excavated by hand (rather than cascading automatically, as in the base game). The wonky camera makes it a bit too easy to misclick and lose a bit of energy unintentionally, while the randomly generated levels are too repetitive and lack compelling designs. I ended up putting it down for good after clicking through just five levels

Outside of Adventure Mode, Minesweeper is still the same game of mathematical logic it’s always been. It's a timeless design that provides a good, basic mental workout, like push ups for your brain. The only real design issue, which the new version still hasn't solved, is the fact that many randomly generated boards still come down to guessing the location of those final mines, which can be incredibly frustrating after spending minutes flawlessly clearing the rest of the board.

The mouse controls are as efficient as ever: right-click to mark a tile, left click to reveal, click them both to clear all adjacent tiles. You can use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out from the full-screen display, which is a nice touch for those playing on smaller monitors or living room TVs. And the Daily Challenges put some interesting twists on the basic game, including one mode where you can only place mine-marking flags on a partially exposed playfield and another where you’re actually trying to blow up a set number of mines in as few moves as possible.

Minesweeper Adventure Mode is obviously due to a feature request from various HR Departments:

Quote:

Dear Microsoft,

Our internal studies show that approximately 5-7% of worker productivity is squandered playing games that are installed by default with Windows. When we drill down, and look at productivity loss amongst our higher paid IT staff and other technical disciplines, we have seen that number rise to 10-12%. We are basically hemorrhaging cash here. Please help.

So, to be clear, in order to play Solitaire it must be full screen? That's just the stupidest thing I've ever heard in solitaire-related news. I must be the only person in the world who keeps Solitaire open while doing other things (watching Netflix, etc.).

There’s way too much empty space, and each blank area has to be annoyingly excavated by hand (rather than cascading automatically, as in the base game).

This isn't exactly right in my experience. Playing it some today, if there are no "traps" (read "mines") nearby, the dirt will automatically evaporate just by walking within about 2. It only slows you down in that you do have to go bit by bit, but it's not like you're mining out each square one-by-one which would be intolerable.

Theres Pinball FX 2 in the Store, which is made by Microsoft. So don't know why it's not in this article, it's a great game and i'm sure MS used to include a pinball game on very old versions of Windows...

It may be old school, but frankly, most applications have absolutely no need for full screen. Why is getting rid of windows in windows considered innovative?

Is it the tablet influence being forced onto Windows users? Like most users, I use overlapping windows all the time and non-full screen programs every day. Making everything open to fill large desktop LCD screens so you can't do even two things at once seems really... stupid.

It may be old school, but frankly, most applications have absolutely no need for full screen. Why is getting rid of windows in windows considered innovative?

This is one of the things that bugs me about Win8. I have no issue with Metro style on tablets and phones, and I very much like my WinPhone7.

But on my desktop I never use the desktop itself, I hate clutter there. Programs I use often are on the taskbar, and most programs (virtually all) are run in windowed mode. It's like I actively avoid the desktop so that I can have useful stuff open. That's what I preferred in WIn 3.0 compared to DOS

But now MS is pushing toward metro "windows" being primarily on the desktop and apps like the games being full screen. It just isn't the way I do things, and it's like MS has it completely backward. Don't these games work in non-metro and non-windowed mode?

I am a busy guy, I sometimes need to push aside Freecell and Minesweeper to make room for Pinball.

Freecell is definitely the most difficult of the available games to master

This is so true. My grandfather is what I can call a professional Freecell player. He has been playing Freecell almost every single day for over 10 years. Last time I checked (a few years ago), he had played over 200,000 games with 65% or so winning rate.

The version of minesweeper (I forget the name it actually used) I remember from the computer I had when I was a kid was quite similar to the adventure mode. Instead of having you just click to reveal squares you had a guy in the upper left hand corner and the goal was to get him to the lower right. As you moved numbers for the squares around you would be revealed.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.